This application related generally to the field of communication networks. More specifically, the disclosure provided herein relates to monitoring circuit diversity within a communications network.
Communication networks may be used to support voice, data, video, or other traffic for various applications. Critical applications may impose level of service requirements on providers of the networks or circuits within the networks. Circuits within networks may interconnect two nodes of the network. Circuits may be made up of one or more links that provide hops from node to node between the start node and end node of the circuit.
Level of service requirements may expect diversity for circuits, links, or resources associated with the circuits. For example, a level of service for a critical circuit may expect there to be a backup circuit. As an example of diversity, the backup circuit can be physically separated from the primary circuit. With such diversity, failure of the primary circuit is less likely to imply failure of the backup as well. If both the primary circuit and the backup circuit use fibers or cables within the same conduit, cutting of the conduit may shut down both circuits.
Traditional communication networks may merely hope that a network architecture provides a backup path through the network should the primary path suffer a failure. Even where critical circuits may be identified to ensure backups, traditional techniques can require manual examination of the circuit routes to evaluate diversity for the critical circuits. Such manual examination does not scale with network complexity or changing service requirements. Manual examination of network route details is tedious and time consuming and increases a potential for human error.